This invention relates generally to a printed circuit board, and more particularly to attaching one or more electrical circuit components to another electrical circuit component included on a printed circuit board.
As it is known in the art, a printed circuit board generally includes components, specifically electrical circuit components such as computer chips, resistors, capacitors and application specific integrated circuits. Producing the printed circuit board typically includes designing the printed circuit board by laying out various components and appropriately connecting the various components together. Once the design of the printed circuit board is complete, a large quantity of printed circuit boards is generally manufactured in accordance with the design. Large amounts of money, in terms of engineering and manufacturing time and resources, are typically expended to design and manufacture printed circuit boards.
Problems may arise when a printed circuit board needs modification. Modifications may be needed for a number of reasons. For example, a modification may be necessary to correct a problem with a component on the printed circuit board by adding other components, such as a plurality of capacitors and resistors.
Other modifications may be necessary to acquire additional functionality. For example, if a printed circuit board is included as part of a computer system, additional functionality may be achieved by adding a plurality of computer chips to an existing printed circuit board.
Adding components to a printed circuit board is typically done by hand soldering each additional component to the printed circuit board. In another technique, the additional components are glued on one side of printed circuit board and then each additional component is wired to another component on the printed circuit board.
Hand soldering and gluing the electrical components may not be suitable when adding a large quantity of components or when adding components that require connecting a large number of pins. In this case, these two methods may increase manufacturing cost and time.
Reliability and quality may also decrease since these two methods of attaching the additional components increase the chance for human error. Also, the attached components may protrude from the printed circuit board and may be disconnected from the printed circuit board as a result of physical movement or contact with other objects.
These two methods may impose an unacceptable restriction by not allowing an additional component to be placed in close physical proximity to another component, as may be required for example, for a correction in which additional capacitors are added to achieve a dampening effect. The dampening effect of a capacitor diminishes as the physical distance between the capacitor and the source to be dampened increases.
An alternative technique includes designing a new lay out of the printed circuit board to include the additional components while minimizing the distance between each additional component and its corresponding component.
Typically, a new layout may not be a feasible solution to incorporate a modification to a printed circuit board for a number of reasons. One reason may be due to time constraints. Typically, to meet production deadlines and schedules, there is insufficient time to layout a new design and to produce new printed circuit boards based on the new design. Too much additional time is required for this redesign and remanufacture a printed circuit board. Another reason may be due to cost constraints. For example, the money and time invested in the existing printed circuit board is wasted. Specifically, any printed circuit boards previously manufactured may be scrapped thereby greatly increasing costs in addition to not meeting existing production deadlines.